


truth falls in pieces

by Natmich



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Eleventh Doctor Era, Episode: s05e13 The Big Bang, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:03:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natmich/pseuds/Natmich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world without the Doctor, Amelia Pond must hold everything that was lost by herself. "Before, there are worlds beyond the thin storybooks and their fairy tales - worlds too dangerous and delicious to reduce to letters on a page, too woven through and around and when to trust to mere human imagination." Written post-season five.</p>
            </blockquote>





	truth falls in pieces

**Author's Note:**

> This was written over two years ago after the end of season five, but as I had been out of the world of fanfic for many years prior, I never posted it. It's a little untimely now, but hopefully still enjoyable.

Amelia Pond has little use for books, with their two-dimensional symbols and dust, the annoying way they try to trap and contain and tame the stories she doesn’t know but remembers.  Her schoolteachers lament that such a bright child disregards the written word, but Amelia knows the secret that cannot be written, the secret of _before_ when fantasy was true, and she grasps for _after_ when it will be again.

_Before_ , there are worlds beyond the thin storybooks and their fairy tales - worlds too dangerous and delicious to reduce to letters on a page, too woven through and around and when to trust to mere human imagination.  They must be seen and lived and loved, written in one’s soul and not on paper.  _Before_ , fish swam in the dessert not the river, and the river was full of music and secrets and _time_ that was a brilliant blue and it doesn’t make any _sense_ when she puts it into words.  She doesn’t understand _before_ , not really, and she thinks a better name for it might be _not yet_ or _not anymore_ , but she knows it’s important and it’s real and that’s enough.

She play-acts her _before_ stories, building them from splintered memories and soul-deep longing and Rory-expressions and invisible stars and the bowtie that sits out of sight in the corner of her mind’s eye.  _This_ is truth, these games and clay dolls and pieces of a life lost, scotch-taped together where the jagged edges meet.  She can sense that it’s not complete.  There are holes in her puzzle, little cardboard pieces that have fallen in between the couch cushions.  But even if it’s not the whole truth, so help me God, it at least remembers the stars, and that’s more than the books do.

Sometimes she thinks that Rory remembers too, like the time he asked about the Romans in school and everyone looked at him funny.  Later, he doesn’t even recall asking the question, but Amelia recognizes _before_ when she sees it in her best friend’s (ancient) eyes. 

The third psychiatrist makes her write down her worlds to show her the difference between reality and dreams, and the paper makes her stories flat like the books.  The doctor points out the impossible things in the words on the page, and Amelia wants to cry out _it’s not that kind of fairy tale_ , but she doesn’t.   The impossible things aren’t impossible when you think inside the box ( _the brilliant blue box_ ) and the third psychiatrist doesn’t remember this like Amelia does.  The third psychiatrist isn’t that kind of doctor.

After the fourth psychiatrist, Amelia crumbles and blinks and when she opens her eyes, she’s turned into Amy.  Amy doesn’t remember _before_ the same way Amelia did, but she defends the stars because everyone tells her not to and because the sky seems so lost without them. 

She knows something about feeling lost.

When Rory asks her out, earnest as only he can be, Amy remembers when she was Amelia, playing hide-and-seek and sitting so still and silent in the empty cupboard next to the china cabinet (the funny carved one that she wasn’t supposed to touch), absolutely sure that nobody would look for her there, not in a thousand years or more.  Then Rory’s face was in front of hers saying, _I found you_ ,and she knew right then that he did and does and will, wherever and whenever she is.  It’s the only time she doesn’t feel lost at all, and maybe if Rory can find her, then she can help the sky find the stars again.

She says yes.

But while she’s out shopping one day, she finds a postcard with Van Gogh’s _Starry Night_ on the front,and she realizes that the stars came back on their own.  She’s the only one who remembers they were ever missing, and she wonders what (who) she’s supposed to find now. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, all the bits of _before_ return, just like the stars, and no one notices.  Amy’s memory starts to empty of these beautiful, burning pieces that she has stored and protected and held dear for so many painstaking years until all that’s left is her bizarre and fantastic (imaginary) friend.  He doggedly refuses to return to life, and eventually, even Amy has to admit that he never existed at all.

And so she lives without him.  She travels to Scotland with her parents and meets the family she didn’t know she had.  She falls in love with Rory all over again, this time for who _he is_ instead of who he is to _her_ , and she teases him when he spontaneously proposes to her on his couch after a truly awful movie, sputtering and wringing his hands and looking at her with such _Roryness_.  She says yes, of course.  She discovers that she loves to paint (when she can sit still that long), loves the colors and the sensation and the way time doesn’t exist on the canvas, the way a painting that doesn’t look like anything on earth can overflow with story more potently than any book she’s ever read.  Because even though _before_ came back like Amelia knew it would, the books are still empty.

Then somewhere along the way, Amy forgets along with everyone else.  The world and its stories have all been put right somehow and there’s no need to remember anymore.

Only on that day, the day she and Rory will kiss and dance and promise forever, she suddenly _knows_ how special the stars are again, and she fears how empty the world might be without them.  For just a moment, she’s convinced she is Amelia once more, and she’s mourning the loss of _before_ even as she remembers that _before_ is just now, and _now_ the stars are taken for granted and her lips form the words _Mum and Dad_ as easily as they form Rory’s name, and the Raggedy Doctor is just her childhood imaginary friend.

So she forgets about stars and before and raggedy doctors, and she marries her best friend.

And it’s the most wonderful day of her life.

But for the first time in years, something is not right.

It’s the book that tells her.  The book that doesn’t even try to tell a story it can’t, doesn’t have any words at all, and she knows that she’s meant to find whatever it is that belongs inside it.  She was never supposed to find the stars or the Romans or any of that – it’s what’s missing from this book, the story that will fix all the other stories and all the other books.

But that’s not right, because the book – the book _is_ the story, somehow. There are clues, it’s right here and - her eyes flit around the room, catch on a bow tie and stick on a set of braces. She hears a noise and looks down at the puddle of the tear she didn’t know she’d spilt on the book’s blue cover.

The _blue_ cover.

She knows what (who) is missing.

How could she ever forget?


End file.
